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<h2 id="jspc">jspc</h2>
<h3><em><u>Deprecated</u></em></h3>
<p><em>If you use this task with Tomcat's Jasper JSP compiler, you should seriously consider using
the task shipping with Tomcat instead.</em>  This task is only tested against Tomcat 4.x. There are
known problems with Tomcat 5.x that won't get fixed in Ant, please use Tomcat's <code>jspc</code>
task instead.<br/>  Instead of relying on container-specific JSP compilers we suggest deploying the
raw files (<samp>*.jsp</samp>) and use the container build-in functions: after deploying run a test
suite (e.g. with <a href="https://attic.apache.org/projects/jakarta-cactus.html"
target="_top">Cactus</a> or <a href="http://httpunit.sourceforge.net/" target="_top">HttpUnit</a>)
against the deployed web application. So you'll get the test result <em>and</em> the compiled
JSPs.</p>
<h3>Description</h3>

<p>Apache Ant task to run the JSP compiler and turn JSP pages into Java source files.</p>

<p>This task can be used to precompile JSP pages for fast initial invocation of JSP pages,
deployment on a server without the full JDK installed, or simply to syntax check the pages without
deploying them.  In most cases, a <code>javac</code> task is usually the next stage in the build
process.  The task does basic dependency checking to prevent unnecessary recompilation&mdash;this
checking compares source and destination timestamps, and does not factor in class or taglib
dependencies, or <code>&lt;jsp:include&gt;</code> references.</p>

<p>By default the task uses the Jasper JSP compiler. This means the task
needs <samp>jasper.jar</samp> and <samp>jasper-runtime.jar</samp>, which come with builds of Tomcat
4/Catalina from the <a href="https://tomcat.apache.org/" target="_top">Apache Tomcat project</a>,
and any other jar files which may be needed in future versions (it changes).</p>

<p>We recommend (in March 2003) Tomcat version 4.1.x for the most robust version of Jasper.</p>

<p>There are many limitations with this task which partially stem from the many versions of Jasper,
others from implementation 'issues' in the task (i.e. nobody's willingness to radically change large
bits of it to work around Jasper). Because of this and the fact that JSP pages do not have to be
portable across implementations&mdash;or versions of implementations&mdash;this task is better used
for validating JSP pages before deployment, rather than precompiling them. For the latter, just
deploy and run your HttpUnit JUnit tests after deployment to compile and test your pages, all in one
go.</p>


<h3>Parameters</h3>
<p>The Task has the following attributes:</p>

<table class="attr">
  <tr>
    <th scope="col">Attribute</th>
    <th scope="col">Description</th>
    <th scope="col">Required</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>destdir</td>
    <td>Where to place the generated files. They are located under here according to the given
      package name.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>srcdir</td>
    <td>Where to look for source JSP files.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>verbose</td>
    <td>The verbosity integer to pass to the compiler.</td>
    <td>No; default <q>0</q></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>package</td>
    <td>Name of the destination package for generated Java classes.</td>
    <td>No</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>compiler</td>
    <td>class name of a JSP compiler adapter, such as <q>jasper</q> or <q>jasper41</q></td>
    <td>No; defaults to <q>jasper</q></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>ieplugin</td>
    <td>Java Plugin classid for Internet Explorer.</td>
    <td>No</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>mapped</td>
    <td>(boolean) Generate separate <code>write()</code> calls for each HTML line in the JSP.</td>
    <td>No</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>classpath</td>
    <td>The classpath to use to run the JSP compiler.</td>
    <td>No, but it seems to work better when used; can also be specified by the nested
      element <a href="../using.html#path"><code>classpath</code></a></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>classpathref</td>
    <td>A <a href="../using.html#references">Reference</a>. As per <var>classpath</var>.</td>
    <td>No</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>failonerror</td>
    <td>flag to control action on compile failures.</td>
    <td>No; default <q>yes</q></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>uribase</td>
    <td>The context of relative URI references in JSP.</td>
    <td>No; derived from the location of the file relative to the declared or derived value
      of <var>uriroot</var></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>uriroot</td>
    <td>The root directory that URIs should be resolved against.</td>
    <td>No</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>compiler</td>
    <td>Class name of JSP compiler adapter to use.</td>
    <td>No; defaults to the standard adapter for Jasper</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>compilerclasspath</td>
    <td>The classpath used to find the compiler adapter specified by the <var>compiler</var>
      attribute.</td>
    <td>No</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>webinc</td>
    <td>Output file name for the fraction of <samp>web.xml</samp> that lists servlets.</td>
    <td>No</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>webxml</td>
    <td>File name for <samp>web.xml</samp> to be generated</td>
    <td>No</td>
  </tr>
</table>

<p>The <var>mapped</var> option will, if set to <q>true</q>, split the JSP text content into a one
line per call format.  There are comments above and below the mapped write calls to localize where
in the JSP file each line of text comes from.  This can lead to a minor performance degradation (but
it is bound by a linear complexity).  Without this option all adjacent writes are concatenated into
a single write.</p>

<p>The <var>ieplugin</var> option is used by the <code>&lt;jsp:plugin&gt;</code> tags.  If the Java
Plug-in COM Class-ID you want to use changes then it can be specified here.  This should not need to
be altered.</p>

<p><var>uriroot</var> specifies the root of the web application.  This is where all absolute URIs
will be resolved from.  If it is not specified then the first JSP page will be used to derive it.
To derive it each parent directory of the first JSP page is searched for a <samp>WEB-INF</samp>
directory, and the directory closest to the JSP page that has one will be used.  If none can be
found then the directory Jasperc was called from will be used.  This only affects pages translated
from an explicitly declared JSP file&mdash;including references to taglibs.</p>

<p><var>uribase</var> is used to establish the context of relative URI references in the JSP pages.
If it does not exist then it is derived from the location of the file relative to the declared or
derived value of <var>uriroot</var>. This only affects pages translated from an explicitly declared
JSP file.</p>

<h3>Parameters specified as nested elements</h3>

<p>This task is a <a href="../dirtasks.html">directory based task</a>, like <code>javac</code>, so
the <samp>.jsp</samp> files to be compiled are located as <samp>.java</samp> files are
by <code>javac</code>. That is, elements such as <code>includes</code> and <code>excludes</code> can
be used directly inside the task declaration.</p>

<p>Elements specific to the <code>jspc</code> task are:</p>

<h4>classpath</h4>

<p>The classpath used to compile the JSP pages, specified as for any other classpath.</p>

<h4>classpathref</h4>

<p>a reference to an existing classpath</p>

<h4>webapp</h4>

<p>Instructions to Jasper to build an entire web application.  The base directory must have
a <samp>WEB-INF</samp> subdirectory beneath it.  When used, the task hands off all dependency
checking to the compiler.</p>
<table class="attr">
  <tr>
    <th scope="col">Attribute</th>
    <th scope="col">Description</th>
    <th scope="col">Required</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>basedir</td>
    <td>the base directory of the web application</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
  </tr>
</table>

<h3>Example</h3>
<p>Build all <samp>.jsp</samp> files under <samp>src/war</samp> into the
destination <samp>/gensrc</samp>, in a package hierarchy beginning
with <samp>com.i3sp.jsp</samp>.</p>
<pre>
&lt;jspc srcdir="${basedir}/src/war"
      destdir="${basedir}/gensrc"
      package="com.i3sp.jsp"
      compiler="jasper41"
      verbose="9"&gt;
  &lt;include name="**/*.jsp"/&gt;
&lt;/jspc&gt;</pre>

<p>Generate <samp>.java</samp> files from <samp>.jsp</samp> files, then <code>javac</code> them down
to bytecode. Include <samp>lib/taglibs.jar</samp> in the Java compilation. Dependency checking is
used to scrub the <samp>.java</samp> files if class dependencies indicate it is needed.</p>
<pre>
&lt;jspc destdir="interim"
      verbose="1"
      srcdir="src"
      compiler="jasper41"
      package="com.i3sp.jsp"&gt;
  &lt;include name="**/*.jsp"/&gt;
&lt;/jspc&gt;
&lt;depend srcdir="interim"
         destdir="build"
         cache="build/dependencies"
         classpath="lib/taglibs.jar"/&gt;
&lt;javac srcdir="interim"
         destdir="build"
         classpath="lib/taglibs.jar"
         debug="on"/&gt;</pre>

<h4>Notes</h4>
<p>Using the <var>package</var> attribute it is possible to identify the
resulting <samp>.java</samp> files and thus do full dependency checking&mdash;this task should only
rebuild <samp>.java</samp> files if their <samp>.jsp</samp> file has been modified. However, this
only works with some versions of Jasper. By default the checking supports Tomcat 4.0.x with
the <q>jasper</q> compiler, set the compiler to <q>jasper41</q> for the Tomcat 4.1.x dependency
checking. Even when it does work, changes in <samp>.tld</samp> imports or in compile time includes
do not get picked up.</p>
<p>Jasper generates JSP pages against the JSP 1.2 specification&mdash;a copy of version 2.3 of the
servlet specification is needed on the classpath to compile the Java code.</p>
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